Antiquing Adventure

You know a day is going to be rough when you don't have time to make a to-do list and you are mentally listing things on your "done list" instead... and you come up with "clipped fingernails". Drew just  fell asleep for this morning nap and I was able to crank out some work (I work from home on Tuesday and Wednesday) and then take a break to work on this blog post.

Anyways, remember how I posted about opening up our stairway? Well, we'd been trying to figure out what to use for a railing and spindles when AJ drove by the White Elephant outlet in Essex. It's this great antique outlet where everything is half off the sticker price (which is way too high to begin with). My favorite part is the Buck Hut, which is actually the area right next to the dumpster (that sounds really classy). We scouted out the options late last week when they were closed and went back on Sunday... here is the fabulousness that we found:

See those pieces on the diagonal at the front? We bought one, I talked the lady down from $50 to $30. We don't know exactly where it's from but it looks like it's been taken from an old porch. We wanted something with character but not something completely froo-froo.

After a quick visit to the Buck Hut and spending $3 on these steals (more on them in another post):

We went home and put up the new railing… AJ had measured it before we left but we never even thought that the angle of the railing would be different than the angle of our stairway. It definitely is. Notice how it fits almost perfectly at the top of the stairs but then there is a giant gap at the bottom. AJ is going to replace the drywall to fix that problem and then he’ll have to do some tweaking on the inside of the stairway to make it look like it fits with the house (and not like something we found in the Buck Hut. :)).

And here is a photo of the railing up close and personal after a good sanding. We’ll paint it white to match everything else after he finishes working on the drywall, molding, etc.

View from across the kitchen:

While AJ worked on the railing I started getting antsy to see more light in the kitchen, after all, it’s almost spring and it shouldn’t snow again (it did, yesterday), so I took down the drywall that was over our two large (and very old) windows. It’s amazing how much more light comes in now… and it’s amazing how much I realize that the stainless appliances are two different colors of stainless now… note to self: only purchase from one company… Maytag has the perfect silver-y color. GE has a more yellow-y tint to their stainless. Bummer.

After that I got to do a little destruction of my own… in our landing upstairs (three bedrooms and the bath are off of it) we had a mini, non-supporting, wall when we moved in. AJ removed it and put up a makeshift railing to make it more open… It was just scrap wood and I hated it (but it kept us from falling down the stairs while sleep-walking). I’d been thinking of a place to put a linen cabinet (our bathroom is barely big enough to fit a person in it) and I thought if I knocked down the railing I could put a cabinet (like the one in our entryway) in place of it. It didn’t look right. UGG. Now we have no cabinet and no railing… but it still looks better.

View from the stairway:

We think we’ll go back to White Elephant and purchase a matching railing for the upstairs. Won’t that look sharp with dark wood floors and a crisp white railing? In the meantime, we'll be careful not to fall down the stairs.